Fact Or Fiction?

"The sun could explode and we would all die, but modelling based on the most extreme events that we know of says we do not believe a catastrophic return to the stone age is on the cards."  Andrew Richards, severe risk analyst at National Grid

July 5, 2012 M6.1 Solar Flare Full DiskCredit: NASA/SDO/AIA The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of the sun during an M6.1 flare that peaked at 7:44 AM EDT on July 5, 2012. The image is shown in the 304 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically colorized in red.

There is uncertainty around the reality of the sun reaching a peak in its ten-year activity cycle.  A heightened risk that a massive solar storm could knock out power grids, satellites and communications.  We are highly dependent on the anticipated reliability of those power grids, satellites and communications.  Our civil, defence, infrastructures depend on that reliability.

"Governments are taking it very seriously.  These things may be very rare but when they happen, the consequences can be catastrophic", explained space weather specialist Mike Hapgood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Britain.

It is estimated that there is an approximately 12% chance of a major solar storm each decade.  The last such major solar storm occurred one hundred, fifty years ago.  Technology, one hundred, fifty years ago was in its relative infancy.  In the past fifty years science and inventive humankind have converted the world's advance in technologies beyond what most fertile-minded science fiction writers might ever have imagined.

What's more the inter-relatedness of technologies on an international scale is boundless.  We can realistically anticipate a proverbial domino effect should an interruption in mass communications or energy grid take place discretely, for there are few boundaries that cannot be breached by enmeshed systems.

The magnetically charged plasma that the sun twists out in its coronal mass ejections is a threat.  There have been ample instances in the past of just how intrusive and destructive those millions of tonnes of gas hurtling through space can be.  With little advance warning, Earth can potentially become engulfed by that magnetically charged plasma.

The force of that energy is indescribably powerful.  We have no protection against such a force of nature, no magical iron shield that would keep all that we depend upon intact.  Geomagnetic storms are unpredictable and chaos-causing.  Imagine stranded trains, hospitals plunged into darkness and incapacity, miners trapped underground - this can happen anywhere.

With charged particles forced through satellites at hundreds of miles per second, none can withstand the pressure.  Radio communications with planes aloft can be taken out of commission with solar storms affecting the ionosphere, Earth's upper atmosphere where long-range radio waves travel.  Internet capability? Forget it.

Governments are only just beginning to realize the impact and import of this disaster scenario courtesy of sun flares.  "Politically, it started to get some purchase about three years ago.  We know they are real effects, but we are nowhere near there, in terms of our understanding", explains Andrew Richards at the National Grid.

North American and European scientists monitor the sun, and issue warnings to their governments, to power companies satellite operators and airlines.  To take evasive action if at all possible. Work previously performed relating to a greater understanding about space weather and the impact it may or may not have on Earth is relatively new, dating back only twenty to thirty years.

Scientists alert to disastrous sun spot events, fearing the worst and raising an alarm would have at most a few days to prepare network transformers for action to possibly spread the electrical load as much as possible when such a storm hits to avoid overload and collapse.  There's nothing quite like that potential to fix the mind.